2nd November 2025

Abraham, friend of God, father of faith, n°6 – 02/11/25 – Martin Mowat

Readings: Genesis 15:1-6 & Romans 4:1-8 & 13-16

We’re studying the life of Abraham, and so some of you will remember, no doubt, that he was described by the apostle James as being the “friend of God”, and by the apostle Paul as the “father of faith”.  Well, it’s this second description that is the focus of our thoughts this morning.  

Last week my message was centred on Melchizedek, the king of Salem, whose name meant “king of righteousness”, and if you were here, you’ll have heard me define ‘righteousness’.  It’s important to properly understand, I said, because it’s a word used no fewer than 700 times in the Bible, and we heard it again this morning, right at the end of Jess’s reading. And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith. We heard it 5 times in Briget’s reading too.  

Do you remember our definition of being righteous? “Doing everything that God has called you to do“.  And one of those things is to 

believe him, to have faith in him. 

The sad truth is, though, today’s world is full of people who don’t have faith in him.  Some poor souls don’t really have faith in anything except themselves, or not even. They don’t for all sorts of reasons, but the really exciting news is that all over Christendom, more and more people are finding that not believing creates more questions than it answers, and that what it doesn’t answer is any of life’s biggest questions, the ones about identity, significance, andmeaning. That’s doubtless why Bible sales in the UK have risen by a staggering 87% in the 5 years from 2019 to 2024, that’s nearly double, with young people driving the change.

But Abraham did. If God said that he would have a son, that was good enough for him. Believing was what he had been called to do, and when he did, it says, the Lord counted him as righteous.

In our first reading from Genesis 15, we heard how God specifically repeated his promise of an heir, and then challenged Abraham to count the stars in the sky. 

Have you ever tried to do that one balmy summer’s night, somewhere where there wasn’t too much light pollution? The more you looked, the more you saw, and this was how it was going to be with Abraham’s offspring.  Apparently, on a clear night the human eye can see about 5000 stars, but there are millions more out there that you can’t see, and that’s what God was saying. You may not be able to see all the stars now but they’re out there.  You can’t see your offspring now but they’re out there, in the future.

God also told him how those offspring would spend 400 years in slavery, but finally come away with huge wealth. That would be some 600 later. 

And then, in chapter 16, it finally happened, the thing that Abraham wanted most in the world, more than fame or fortune, more even than being counted as righteous perhaps, he had a son.  

But that’s for next time, because I want us to think about Romans chapter 4, from which Briget just read us a couple of extracts, and which is entitled “Abraham Justified by Faith”. 

Justification by faith is a favourite subject of many evangelical preachers.  Very simply stated, it means that it’s not what we DO, but what we BELIEVE IN, and how that changes our behaviour, that justifies us in God’s eyes.

Our reading started off by Paul asking “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter?”  What matter is he asking about? The matter of ‘Righteousness Through Faith’ that Paul had been discussing in the previous chapter.  

‘Righteousness’ and ‘Faith’ are umbelically linked together like a mother and her unborn child. 

Over a thousand years later, a prophet called Habakkuk was complaining to God about his apparent lack of response, and of his apparent tolerance of wickedness, and in his answer God said to Habakkuk “See, the enemy is puffed up; his desires are not upright— but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness.”

Abraham’s faith in God is the key to understanding the significance of his life, and its application to our lives. In order to appreciate it fully, we need first of all to think about what faith itself means. 

Hebrews 11 defines it for us in these terms; Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.  This is what the ancients were commended for, one of whom, of course was Abraham. And then several verses later it tells is that “by faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.  By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” 

As we think about what faith is, it’s also worth being clear about what it isn’t. Atheists will try to tell you that faith is a purely religious concept that means ‘believing where there is no evidence’.  But that’s a definition of “blind” faith, which is both delusional and dangerous, and is absolutely NOT what we’re talking about, or what we’re expected to practice.

What we are talking about is faith in facts and in people: in God, in Christianity, in global warming, in one’s spouse, in science, in one’s bank, in the fact that 2 + 2 = 4, and that the earth is round.

Everyone exercises faith of that sort on a daily basis. Imagine what would happen if people did not place their faith in maps, in traffic lights, in electrical appliances, in doctors and surgeons, in pilots, in lawyers, and so on.  

So faith, as such, is NOT the ‘purely religious concept’ that atheists claim it to be.  

In the case of the Christian faith, for example, it’s based on a series of concrete proven facts, some of which we cite weekly when we say the Creed together. We don’t need to have seen them with our own eyes, or experienced them personally to have the faith that they are true. 

I read somewhere that “the biblical concept of faith in God is neither credulous, (that’s having or showing too great a readiness to believe things) - The biblical concept of faith in God is neither credulous nor is it blind, but is a personal commitment based on evidence. It is also an active stance that leads to action, and not merely a passive and subjective mental assent to the existence of God”. 

That is the sort of faith that will be credited to you and I as righteousness. 

Just briefly, as a side note before we conclude, this does not preclude or replace the process of “sanctification” which is simply what happens to us when we allow Jesus, by his Holy Spirit, to come into our daily lives and start transforming us from the self-centred sinners that we once were, into the Christ-centred missionaries that we have the potential to become. People who can whole heartedly say with Paul “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: …. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17)

This is a huge subject, and we’ve hardly skimmed the surface.  But I sincerely hope that you’ve caught the gist of what I’m trying to say.

So, to conclude, a few verses later in that chapter of Romans, Paul says that Abraham was fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.  This is why, it says, “it was credited to him as righteousness.” That poses an important question for each of us. Are we, am I, are you fully persuaded that God still has the power to do what he has promised?